Written by Sophie Rose
Never before has the public been so fluent in the language of mental health – or so confused by it. Language has always been a way for people to understand themselves. With a new generation being raised online, the vocabulary of therapy and diagnosis is teaching them new ways to describe relationships, habits, insecurities, and identities. Social media platforms, such as TikTok, have popularised and transformed psychological terminology at extraordinary speed, exposing millions of users to discussions about trauma, neurodivergence, personality disorders, and emotional wellbeing. This increased visibility has undeniably helped normalise conversations around mental health, but has simultaneously encouraged oversimplification, self-diagnosis, and the misuse of clinical terms in everyday situations. As these terms travel further from their clinical origins, they shift in meaning – becoming exaggerated, aestheticised, or stripped of nuance altogether. The result is a culture in which psychological concepts are more visible, and yet, less precise.
Are these conversations actually helping? And if so – who are they helping?
Why are labels so appealing?
Labels offer self-coherence. They explain who you are and why you act the way you do. My own diagnosis with autism at 18 gave me language to describe the struggles I’ve had since childhood, particularly in relationships and education. Labels also build community: they identify shared experience, create common ground, and connect you with people that understand you through shared experiences.
It’s also worth acknowledging that formal diagnoses are far from equally accessible. Waitlists stretch for years – I’m currently on a four year one – and a private diagnosis costs thousands. Self-identification, in this context, isn’t laziness or attention-seeking. For many people, it’s the only route to self-understanding.
Yet, labels can also be sought for less grounded reasons – and this is where things begin to unravel.
Lost in translation
The 21st century, and particularly the 2020s, has seen a massive rise in therapy culture – the use of psychological frameworks shaping how people interpret their lives. With mental health language becoming increasingly mainstream, people today are understanding identity, relationships, and behaviour through psychological categories. However, as these concepts enter the zeitgeist, their meanings slowly begin to detach from their origins, increasingly becoming simplified and aestheticised.
Take attachment styles. Attachment styles are psychological frameworks rooted in childhood experiences, outlining how people navigate emotional intimacy, trust, and conflict in interpersonal relationships. Most people fit into a secure attachment style, having a healthy balance of closeness and independence. Yet, if you were to scroll through TikTok for a number of minutes, you’d think almost everyone has insecure attachment.
Insecure-resistant attachment – characterised by fluctuating needs for intimacy and independence, typically rooted from a lack of consistent care in childhood – has become particularly fashionable, despite being one of the rarest types. When someone gets too attached to their latest situationship, it’s because they’re insecure-resistant. When someone can’t engage in intimate emotional conversation with their partner, it’s because they’re insecure-resistant. Sounds trivial, right? It’s been repackaged into a quirky personality trait, with social media ignoring its roots in traumatising parental neglect during childhood.
This same pattern applies for ADHD. Random bursts of hyperfocus and sometimes the odd lateness doesn’t make it sound bad, just a little eccentric. Yet, the reality of ADHD is a debilitating one – it impacts daily functioning, career and educational achievement, as well as interpersonal relationships.
We can apply this same trajectory to terms like gaslighting, overstimulation…the list goes on. TikTok has caused clinical diagnoses and neurodiverse conditions to be repackaged into consumable descriptors for ordinary frustrations, and has caused suffering to become something of social value. Having an insecure attachment style or ADHD is no longer just a clinical reality, but a sense of being interestingly different. Where does the impulse to reach for a label tip from self-understanding into something more complicated?
Diagnosis as identity
I often see self-labelling being a means of performance – performing an identity that makes one seem different, unique or exciting, without the acknowledgement of what actually comes with it.
It can also be a form of confirmation bias – the more you believe something to be true, the more you seek out information to confirm that belief. Someone who believes they have ADHD may seek out TikToks from those with ADHD and think “I do that!” while ignoring the plethora of evidence that says they don’t. Some people even continue to believe they do after clinicians have not given them a diagnosis. This false conviction may even cause people to actively perform their ‘ADHD.’ Or perhaps someone convinced they have an insecure-resistant attachment style may falsely recollect parts of their childhood that never occurred, or interpret past experiences in a way that confirms their current belief. At what point does it turn from self-relief to a self-fulfilling prophecy?
There is a particular comfort in a label that explains difficult behaviour. If lateness is time-blindness, if emotional unavailability is an attachment style, if conflict is a trauma response, then these things are not choices, but conditions. The relief in that is real. To have an explanation for something that has caused harm can feel like finally being let off a hook you didn’t know you were on.
There is a point at which explanation becomes insulation. When a label stops being a starting point for understanding and becomes a reason to stop there entirely, it shifts from self-awareness to self-protection. It is now a trait that people cannot question without being accused of ignorance or insensitivity. This extends beyond the individual, forcing a community to accept harmful behaviours.
While labels provide insight, they require engagement to break. Social media fails in acknowledging this. A parent who identifies their own insecure attachment and treats it as a fixed identity rather than a site of potential change is more likely to reproduce that pattern in their children. When the label is worn for identification rather than insight, it is purely self-fulfilling. However, this same dynamic can look identical from the outside whether someone is avoiding growth or genuinely struggling with a condition that resists it. Compassion for others requires acknowledging both possibilities, but those suffering must be honest. The question worth asking is not whether a label is valid, but what someone is doing with it – whether it has opened something up or quietly closed it off.
The medicalisation of ordinary human behaviour is possibly the most damaging. TikTok has made it seem like everything needs a label. Perhaps some behaviours deviate from the norm, but that doesn’t mean they ARE abnormal. It is perfectly normal to struggle to open up emotionally to a partner – that doesn’t necessarily constitute an insecure attachment. Feeling like the odd one out in a group doesn’t necessarily constitute neurodivergence; you may just be in the wrong space. The need to label behaviours with clinical terminology has stripped this nuance, making everything seem not just unique, but abnormal. Psychological language clarifies experiences – it should not be weaponised to construct it.
What we lose in the simplification
The tension sits in whether therapy culture democratises mental health literacy or pathologises normal human behaviour.
There are real advantages. Open conversation reduces stigma and normalises difficulty. It makes psychological literacy accessible beyond those with the resources to obtain a diagnosis. And it builds community – connecting people through shared experience in ways that can be transformative.
But it also comes with drawbacks. It has produced an over-diagnosis culture where every behaviour requires a clinical explanation, one that cannot be questioned without seeming insensitive, and that can become a reason not to change. People with genuine diagnoses often work hard to manage their symptoms; the label does not preclude accountability.
It also strips conversations about mental wellbeing of nuance. Mental health is a topic full of grey areas. TikTok makes it appear binary. Conversations on social media lack the subtleties that plague psychology, collapsing distinctions that take professionals years to understand.
With clinical diagnoses becoming quirky personality traits, it minimises the real issues that come with them, while also pathologising what is normal. This trivialisation of mental conditions blurs the line between what actually is a quirky personality trait suddenly requires a medical explanation.
And finally, people become increasingly attached to these labels and diagnoses. They don’t just offer a sense of self, but become the self. They are not simply a part of you, but they are you.
Fluent, but not yet literate
None of this means the conversation should stop. If anything, the fact that millions of people are reaching for psychological language to understand themselves is one of the more hopeful developments of recent years. People want to understand themselves – that instinct is not the problem.
The problem is what happens when the tools available to satisfy that appetite are blunt ones. A TikTok explaining attachment theory in sixty seconds is not the same as sitting with a therapist for sixty hours. A comment section full of people saying “same, it’s literally my ADHD” is not the same as a clinician ruling out the twelve other explanations. The popularisation of psychological language has democratised access to ideas that were previously locked inside consulting rooms and academic journals – but democratisation without depth produces a version of literacy that mistakes recognition for understanding.
What the conversation needs is not less openness, but more honesty about what these terms actually mean and what they actually cost. It needs people willing to ask not just “what am I?” but also “ what do I do with that?” A label that explains everything but demands nothing is not insight. It’s a very comfortable place to stop.
